


dark is the beginning of the word

by kinnoth



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Gen, deliberate ambiguity is deliberately ambiguous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 16:09:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7470252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinnoth/pseuds/kinnoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaz has to be told</p>
            </blockquote>





	dark is the beginning of the word

Kazuhira is told. He is _told_. He wants to scream. He wants to strap himself in grenades and pull the pins. But there's Ocelot here, still, in front of him, regarding him with loose-jointed disdain and cool evaluation, and Kaz. Kaz lets the shadow of his sunglasses take his eyes. How could he have been so fooled. How long had he known the man, the real Boss? How well had he known him, how well, because he’d thought he did. 

How well he had thought he’d known him. By sound if not by sight, by feel, by presence, by his own heart that breathed to be near him. How could he have been so fooled by an imposter. Shadow. Phantom. Pale, poor, piecework imitation to the real thing; it’s so obvious, it’s so obvious to anyone who could have known him. His hands are different, his voice; the Boss never spoke to him like that, never touched him like that. _The scars of his body weren’t even the same;_ how could he have let him touch him, how could he have let, how could he, how. 

Or did he never want to know? Or had the belief been enough? That he’d never thought to question it because he believed; nine years he'd believed that the Boss would come for him, come back for him, come back to him, and then there was his ghost. And he spoke not quite the same, and he felt not quite the same, but his hands were coarse and warm and Kazuhira could not see past their benediction, past the safety they held, past his own faith, his own fantasy. The Boss had come back to him, and that was everything Kaz wanted. He’d dreamed a dream for nine years and now it had come to pass and that was. 

Enough. 

Why couldn’t that be enough. A copy of the original is not the original but it is no less real. Kazuhira knows this. He’s held copies of copies of copies of dossiers stolen for him and translated, transcribed, transliterated, and none of that makes the substance of them any less true, any less portent. The phantom is the Boss’s phantom. He is everything the Boss is, only _interpreted._ And how couldn’t Kaz make do with that. Copy of a copy of the real thing, and still it loved him. Still it needed him. Still it wanted him even now, past broken psyches and stolen limbs, a crippled optimism, a trampled flame. They’d carved away the beauty of his body, but to him, to the Boss’s phantom, he looked upon it as if it were everything he’d ever known. 

And Kaz had loved him for it, even as he’s sick with it, now, to think of it, to think it as true. Nine years he’d had while the Boss slept, while his phantom slept. Nine years he’d had in this world, on his own, to change, to become, and now here they are, here he is, freshly woken, no decade of misery in his past, only an explosion, a dream, and here, now, a yesterday that was literally yesterday. 

Kazuhira makes do. That is what he does, what he is. He cuts a bit here to save a bit there; he trims fat; he’s numbers, balances, needs, and functions. And he can make do. He can. So why doesn’t he? Why doesn’t he? Why doesn’t he?

(But how could the Boss had thought so little of him, to think that he wouldn’t have known, wouldn’t have spotted a fake the minute it appeared, when he’d known him the way Kazuhira had known him, how could he have known he wouldn’t know, how could he have done this to him, how could he have left him here with a lie, why didn’t he know it was a lie, why couldn’t he see it, it was so obvious, his hands, his voice, the way he moved in the dark). 

It’s not him. It's not him. And if it’s not him, then Kazuhira doesn’t want it. If he’d leave Kaz to this, if he’d leave him to live his lie, then Kaz doesn’t want any of it. _Fuck_ Outer Heaven. Fuck the dream. Fuck the Boss’s stolen promises of a better tomorrow, they were his promises, their promises, how could he. How could he. 

He could. 

So Kaz can. 

So he can. He’ll see it through. This time, he'll lead his own future. He'll author his own revenge, and at the end, when it's over, when his life is done, the Boss’ll be there, and he’ll have been waiting for him.


End file.
